Prehistory
by sashwizzled
Summary: (Rating is, for the most part, an exaggeration) A series of less-than-1000-word fanfics: fourth chapter - Briefing and Ordinary World.
1. Nightmare and Déjà Vu

These are all drabbles/ficlets (my definition of a drabble is 1000 words or less, but to some it's a hundred) related to the first two games. Most will take place in game, but some may take place out of game. I might start writing about Dino Stalker and Dino Crisis 3 at some point, but as I'm stuck on both, that won't be for a while.

**Disclaimer:** Dino Crisis 1 and 2 do not belong to me - they belong to Shinji Mikami and Capcom. There is no profit in this work at all; it is derivative, nothing more.

**Title:** Nightmare  
**Pairings: **None  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Word Count:** 709  
**Line**: "And then all eyes turned towards him/her."  
**Notes/Summary: **Set during the Edward city stage of Dino Crisis 2; I figure that the team spent more than one day on the island, so this is what I thought might have happened when night fell.

"_You okay?" someone suddenly asks me. No. No, I'm not. It's a hundred degrees and humid, but I'm freezing – I can't get the memories of Ibis Island out of my head and one of my old claw wounds is itching again. I'm terrified, frankly, and so should you be._

"_Fine."_

_Liar. The guy – shorter than me but built like a tank – narrows his eyes at me and reaches past to grab a shotgun from the rack I'm standing beside._

"_You know something?"_

_No, but I'm sure you're about to tell me._

"_If I didn't have a gun, I'd be shit-scared, too."_

_He walks off, leaving me wondering if the Army teaches them to be that naïve or if it comes naturally._

_There's a sudden crackle of vegetation at the other side of the camp, and a scream of horror; I don't want to look - I know what's happened - but I do anyway; dead man, held up by the leg by a six foot tall raptor. It drops him with a bloody squelch and screeches--_

"Hey – hey, Regina!"

...That wasn't part of her dream – Regina blinked her eyes open and found herself staring at her own knees. She was sitting against the wall, hunched over – and she was supposed to be keeping guard over the abandoned apartment while David and Dylan slept. She was suddenly wide awake; she straightened up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and allowed Dylan to help her to her feet.

"Sorry," she muttered. She hadn't slept in over twenty four hours – and being expected to stay awake in the clean-ish, empty house in Edward City while others slept around her had been harder than she'd thought. Finally, she had closed her eyes – only for a little while, she'd convinced herself; next thing she knew, she was dreaming about things she didn't want to be dreaming about.

"Don't be; I've been awake about half an hour, no harm done. I was going to leave you alone," He paused, "But you looked like you were having a nightmare or something."

He turned the last part into a question – one that Regina didn't want to answer. She shrugged and started to stretch her still tired muscles. As she looked around the small room – David was sound asleep, leaning against the wall and occasionally muttering to himself – she noticed that Dylan was still looking at her enquiringly.

"You okay?"

She was tempted to just tell him – how she couldn't get the memory out of her head of the attack on the camp. How there was a loud, wet crunch and the dying man screamed. And then all eyes turned toward him. And even as she looked at the soldier who'd only just finished telling her that he wouldn't be scared as long as he had a gun, she could see the blood drain from his face and the sweat bead on his forehead. How only twenty minutes later, that man was dead too. Still holding his gun like a mother holds her baby.

How she didn't even know the man's name, but somehow she thought that she'd never forget him.

"I'm fine – just tired." She attempted a reassuring look, but that just wasn't her at the best of times.

Dylan leaned back on his heels and gave her a look that clearly said 'yeah, right' – Regina glanced away.

"Look, I'm just wound up – it really is nothing important." With that, she left the room; going toward what she thought might be the outside for some fresh air. It was, and standing out on the body-littered street, she gulped in air that was still heavy with blood and death. It was a bitter relief for her that now, she was used to this and hardly noticed it.

The dinosaurs seemed to be diurnal – there hadn't been any activity from them all night, only the occasional compy ran past her, chasing insects.

Suddenly, there was movement behind her – she let out an annoyed puff of breath, knowing exactly who it was.

"I'm not asking, okay?" he said before she could tell him she wasn't talking.

Well, good.

Regina leaned against the wall, staring at nothing, clearing the stuffiness from her head.

Presently, she took a deep breath and spoke.

** Title: ** Déjà Vu  
**Pairing:** None  
**Rating: ** R  
** Word Count: ** 802  
** Line: ** "If that doesn't work, nothing will."  
**Notes**: Don't like this one as much as the last one. Anyway, this is a slight AU, as I'm pretty much certain there's no way all three could have travelled through the jungle area at that point without one having to backtrack for the boat, but… err, I really did want David there.

The jungle area was just as hot, humid and full of raptors as two days ago – and it was just as hard to travel through. Having decided that the coast was probably too dangerous, the three surviving soldiers were moving through the jungle area toward the Missile Silo, literally leaving a trail of broken bodies and empty shells behind them.

Regina was quickly learning, much to her disgust, that David was a huge whinger when things didn't go well. And now, that night in camp, rubbing two sticks together in a futile attempt to start a fire (Regina could have, if he'd asked, told him that a random pile of sticks and one leaf wasn't going to start a fire anytime soon), he was muttering to himself and groaning and huffing and sighing and messing up Regina's concentration.

As for Regina herself, she had a rather nasty gash on her thigh from yet another raptor fight earlier in the day (it had also made some less serious cuts along her legs when it knocked her down and mauled her) and was rolling up her trouser leg to take a look – the cloth was stuck to her leg by coagulated blood and it was hurting like nothing else.

David sighed again, and this time, so did Regina – both at David and her leg.

"There's a Flame Thrower beside you – stop playing fucking Boy Scouts and use it!" she snapped, and David – both blind and stupid, evidently – made a small sound of comprehension.

"Hokay. If that doesn't work, nothing will." He grabbed it out of the pile of discarded guns and fired the thing with more gusto than was necessary, and Regina shielded her now bare, bleeding leg as too-bright flames shot onto the heap of twigs. Eventually, they caught alight and David shoved the thrower back in the pile (making a complete mess - _oh, brilliant_) and sat down to warm his hands.

Silence. Nothing but insects chirping and dinosaurs cawing far away. The fire would hopefully scare them off for the night, but they would have to have someone staying awake the whole time.

"You think Dylan's okay?" David asked after a long silence. Possibly not, Regina had to admit – going off to a destroyed campsite known to be in raptor territory (but then, what **wasn't** raptor territory on this island?) just to see if there were any military rations left wasn't a really smart thing to do; David had flat out refused to go anywhere near the place and Regina was in too much pain with her leg.

"You should have gone with him."

_And then I wouldn't have to put up with your damned whining._

"Hey – someone needed to start the campfire!"

"Mm-hmm."

Regina busied herself with an electronic pad containing all the files they'd found so far, ignoring her stinging leg – until Dylan got back from the camp (they had no first aid kits and he might be able to bring some along with the food), all she could do was pull up her trouser leg and let the air at it. Hopefully, first aid kits came with instructions, as she distinctly remembered dozing through the crash course.

They must have sat there for about five minutes before a very loud rustling from behind the fallen tree Regina was sitting on started up – the sound of something quite big pushing through the nearby vegetation. Their reactions were instantaneous; Regina backed away from the trunk, clutching her handgun – David grabbed his rocket launcher (_Like taking a sledgehammer to a nut_, Regina thought, glancing at it) and cocked it up, also aiming at the disturbance.

It turned out to only be Dylan; carrying a pack and a box along with his shotgun and sporting not only a rather deep looking cut down the left side of his face, but also smaller cuts down his arms – he and everything he was carrying were splattered with gore.

David took one look at him and returned to the campfire, muttering about having almost had a heart attack - _almost isn't good enough_, Regina mentally sniped – and she lowered her handgun and approached Dylan.

"They were still there, weren't they?" she murmured, taking the pack from him and throwing it toward David.

"Yeah. Snuck round most of them – sleeping, would you believe – but I stood on one's tail right when I was leaving. Woke them all up."

Regina flinched nervously as she sat back on the tree trunk, but Dylan was too busy digging into the box to notice and David was eating what looked like a Meal, Ready to Eat. She wasn't hungry – too wound up on pain and adrenaline – and was having trouble just sitting still on the trunk without jittering.

She glanced at David. Well, at least **some** people were enjoying themselves.


	2. Untitled and Easy Pickings

**Disclaimer**: Dino Crisis 2 is the property of Shinji Mikami and Capcom. Not KoochiZibble and her wonderful collection of teddy bears. Well, damn.

**Title **_Untitled_**  
Rating** PG-13**  
Word Count** 826**  
Summary/Notes** Possibly can be taken as a sequel to Deja Vu, but I think it can go on its own, too.

By all rights, Regina should be asleep right now; she certainly wanted to be – you forgot pain when you slept, but had gotten used to the fact that sleep wasn't an easy thing for her.

It wasn't even like she was on guard tonight – Dylan was, and as Dylan seemed to be the human version of the Energiser Bunny, always on the go, she didn't feel very guilty for letting him stay up all night.

Still—

From somewhere off to her left, there was sudden gunfire, jolting Regina wide awake. David, who had been dozing near the fire, shot upright and grabbed the first thing that came to hand (a stick – in any other circumstances, Regina would have laughed), glaring around blearily.

_This is just what I need – staying up all night pointing a gun at nothing_ – and that was exactly what Regina was doing, aiming at an innocent leaf while the echo of the blasts rang in her ears. Dylan had left some time ago, having heard something – he must have found the culprit.

It was only a few moments before there was a rustle in the bushes and a tiny dinosaur, compsognathus, skipped into the clearing. Regina and David stared at it, and it was quite happy to stare back.

"That's it? I just got woke up 'cause of that?" David gestured with the stick, then seemed to realise what he was holding and threw it into the bushes with a grunt of disgust.

Out of pure spite, Regina simply shot the thing – hitting the chest where she'd aimed for the head, but whatever. There was barely a squeak from the animal as it flew back into the bushes in a spray of red.

"Great, now a whole pack of them'll come after us. Didn't you see Jurassic Park?" With that, David lay down by the fire - Regina didn't bother telling him that even seeing the DVD cover for that movie made her feel vaguely ill.

By the time Dylan marched back into the area, what looked like a bite mark oozing blood down his face, growling something under his breath and kicking at twigs, David seemed to be dozing again and Regina was drinking out of her hip flask – at this point, she'd have preferred it to be something stronger than water. Dylan sat down on the fallen tree trunk Regina was on and stared at the crackling fire sullenly, wiping at his cheek.

"What happened?" Regina asked, after finally growing sick of the silence.

"One of those little things – compies, I think they called them – tried to steal my body armour. Didn't have any luck, so the bastard bit me," came the curt answer.

_It's shiny, what did you expect?_ Well, it had been shiny at some point. Compies obviously had low standards.

"I'm sick and tired of this damned island."

If he'd wanted to tell Regina something she didn't know, he had pretty much failed.

"I'm sick of dinosaur bites, mosquito bites, dead people everywhere I look – and I'm definitely sick and tired of the smell. Blood everywhere.

"Damn it, I'm sick and tired of always being sick and tired."

Regina was tempted to tell him, _I'm sick and tired of **you** always being sick and tired_, but that made her feel almost guilty, and that made her uncomfortable, so she got up and, after grabbing one of the small first aid kits, knelt beside Dylan.

"Sit still," she murmured, picking up random things she thought she would need (_Alcohol wipes, always good – are those butterfly bandages? Well, they are now._) and using what little medical skills she had - which were usually limited to 'that's a Band Aid. It covers small cuts'- to work out what she should be doing with them.

"Leave it, Regina, it doesn't hurt." Dylan tried to bat her away, but she dodged his hand and gently manoeuvred them both so she could see the wound by the light of the fire.

"I want to," and then, because she couldn't resist, "Because if anything smells you bleeding, we're all screwed. Now, **hold still**."

This time, he listened to her – and didn't move (but occasionally hissed through his teeth while she cleaned the wound) as she clumsily went about stopping the bleeding, biting her lip as hard as she could to keep her concentration going. Her pulse pounded against her teeth.

The butterfly bandages turned out to be fiddly things, and took longer simply because she kept fumbling about with them, but for someone who knew more about taking lives than saving them, Regina thought she'd done a pretty good job on that. Finished, she stood up and backed off, stretching her now aching legs.

Before she could say a word, there was a loud reptilian screech somewhere out of sight. Dylan swore loudly and disappeared in the general direction, leaving Regina to stand and think that next time, she'd just let him bleed to death.

* * *

**Title** Easy Pickings  
**Rating** R**  
Word Count** 754**  
****Notes**And one more from the 'Zarrah defies canon for a 'good' cause' files. This is from the point of view of one of the nameless young men who often accompanied Paula. He's also a crazy bastard in this, so feel free to kill me. (At least, I'm of the opinion that they were men; please show me a screenshot of their breasts of something and prove me wrong. XD)  
Also my first foray into second-person-present-tense. Forgive the crappiness. 

Your every instinct is telling you right now that killing the two people less than ten feet in front of you is the good, right thing to do. You're actually itching to rush in there and kill them both before they can turn around – shoot them and shoot them till their blood lines the walls and even the scavengers won't get a good meal out of their remains – and you can't find much wrong with doing it; but for now, you stand and you watch, strangely fascinated.

The intruding group of soldiers, originally around a thousand, but now only three, is missing a member for some reason – this is a good thing, really, as the missing member packed some heat and you could probably only take all three with the others' help – but you haven't seen your sister since the female inside locked her away, and you split up with your brother not long after. You're alone. Not that that bothers you.

And these two – woman in particular, who seems more like eye candy than anything else - are the easy pickings, you're sure; neither have the gumption to fight back against you, and even if they did, they don't have the necessary firepower to back it up. So far, everything they have done has seemed to be on a 'let's go this way and see what happens' basis. If they had achieved anything at all, it was coincidental.

Even now, neither of them would be in this building – where you know the key they need to reach the residential area and the coastline beyond is stashed – if it wasn't for the pteranodon pack circling outside, cawing raucously. The creatures won't touch you – so you're perfectly content to sneak round the back of the building, still harbouring a secret desire to rip both people's heads off but for now willing to suspend it – finally, you end up peeking at them through a smashed window, being careful not to get the reddened shards of glass on your fingers.

They're both searching the room – they seem to have reached an unspoken agreement to leave searching the dead body in the corner until last, and you smile smugly as you remember from your last visit that the key they're most likely looking for is actually stashed in the man's clothing. You'll be here for a while, you think, and as you watch them, you realise with an almost electric jolt that if you were to lift your gun and shoot both right now, they'd be dead too quickly to even retaliate. You smile at the thought, and for a while, drift in and out of your own fantasies.

"Hey, Regina?" the man suddenly says, making you jump.

"Yeah?" The woman, you notice with a thrill of glee, is standing right in front of the window, side on to you and too pre-occupied in reading something on a sheet of paper to even notice that you're all but leaning in the window.

"You've seen all this before, haven't you?"

You have very little understanding of what the two are saying to each other, and you have little or no sense of empathy, but even you can feel the woman's – Regina's – shock in the following silence.

"Uhhh, what?" She puts the sheaf of paper down – still not noticing you. You're loving this, and once again you ignore the conversation (which is probably just as useless as they are, anyway) in favour of watching imaginary gore spatter, of the woman lying broken in a pool of blood as red as her hair, pleading for her life. Your hand inches off the windowsill and downwards.

"… I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you…"

Forget the joking way in which the woman says this, the words intrigue you ('kill' is one of the only words you have yet remembered) and you determine to pay more attention, at least for a little while. You lean further forward…

And your forearm slides over the glass, creating a grating crunch – not that loud, but loud enough; the woman pivots on one heel and has a gun aimed at your face before you can even draw breath (and you'll spend quite a while afterwards wondering where that gun came from), and the man has a rather larger gun pointed at you almost as quickly.

Your heart leaps into your throat, and you run for it before one of them can forget that they're supposed to be the easy pickings and kills **you**.


	3. Fever

This is very much longer than the rest - it was a supposedly 845 word challenge that ballooned to just over 2,000. Oh, well. I did manage to crop it for the challenge, but here's what I could find of the unedited bit.

**Disclaimer** Dino Crisis and all the characters and locations therein are the property of Capcom. Which is most definitely a good thing because if I owned them, there'd be trouble.

* * *

**Title **Fever  
**Rating** R**  
**

_Later on, Regina would blame this little hunting session on morbid curiosity and possibly exposure to the toxic pollen in the jungle. It wasn't like she would have come out here in a normal state of mind, now was it?_

_Well, possibly. Either way, here she was now, facing down the thing she'd been looking for – the 'blue' raptor mentioned in the files in Edward City. It wasn't blue, _per se_, it only looked so in the light; it was more a dark brown-black. A little taller than the rest of the raptors (about seven inches taller than Regina herself) and quite a bit bigger in general, it had to be some kind of mutate. _

_It seemed to stare at her for a moment (funny how its eyes seemed be more catlike than the others'), making a sound like an angry snake, before leaping at her, scythe-like claws extended, slashing downward and suddenly shrieking fit to smash glass._

_First, her thigh. The claw ripped through both her trousers and skin – and her upper leg felt as though it were on fire. It landed in front of her, dark skin shining with her blood, and seemed to suddenly high kick her; her stomach, her chest, her throat screamed in pain – where was her armour? – she pulled the trigger on her gun, or maybe it was only an convulsive twitch of her finger, but she wasn't even holding her gun anymore, and she was really going to die now wasn't she? It lunged again, this time its mouth wide open, aiming for her throat, wet _crunch_ like standing on a grape -_

**Stop it!**

Regina blinked, took a long, shaky breath and glanced down at her hands, mildly surprised to see that they were bluish and shaking. She pressed them to her face; they felt as cold as they looked.

_That didn't happen, you know that._ No, it didn't. Well, she had met the blue raptor, and she had fought it, but hunting for it had been the last thing on her mind (a super big raptor? No, thanks, she was having enough trouble with the normal ones) – and she had killed the raptor. She searched for the memory – her mind felt so fogged up that she had difficulty putting the pieces together at first.

_The claw ripped through both her trousers and skin – and her upper leg felt as though it were on fire. Regina cried out in pain and fell backward, landing on her rear and pushing herself backward with her uninjured leg. The raptor landed, cawing like a grizzly crow, still-extended claw dripping blood._

_Surprisingly clear-minded despite the pain, she pulled the large machine gun from the holster on her back and swung it forward; as soon as it was in both hands – a wonderfully secure feeling, she had always found – she pulled the trigger, hard. The spray of bullets knocked the creature away from her, shrieking _(or was that her? She couldn't remember)_, and it fell on its side, convulsing and seeming to cough up blood. _

_For a long while, it lay there, gurgling and twitching while Regina still sat there, gun poised, almost about to scream in pain. By the time she realised that she was aiming the machine gun at a dead animal, the insects and scavengers were already swarming around the corpse._

Regina had left the area, continued on her merry way toward the jungle's poison gas zone, and it had all been fine from there; until she woke up the next morning – after a night spent curled up uncomfortably on the metal floor of the ship's cabin - with a fever and a leg wound that looked and smelled remarkably disgusting. Infection. Wonderful.

Funny how she was supposed to have a fever, but she really felt **cold**.

She'd taken her armour and most of her uniform off (they'd wanted to help, but she wasn't **that** ill yet) and now sat slouched in the corner of the cabin, wrapped in an itchy blanket and waiting for David or Dylan to show up with something resembling a med-kit.

All of a sudden, a wave of heat crashed over her and she groaned – the wound prickled again and she resisted the urge to scratch at it. Throwing the blanket off her body – the cold air in the cabin did nothing to lower her temperature; somehow, her skin felt cold, but **she** was boiling hot – Regina stared down at her bare leg (all she was wearing now was her underwear, which usually would have galled her), half-heartedly wondering if she could get rid of the infection with sheer will power.

Before she could really try, though, the door slammed open – she jumped (or more accurately, she twitched nervously) and stared up at it, hoping to God or whatever that it wasn't a particularly _Jurassic Park_-esque raptor. If it was… well, she had a standard Glock, but it would be fun seeing whether or not she could aim straight right now. She grabbed at it clumsily and lifted it, closing one eye to aim – something she hadn't done for **years**.

"Hey, watch it!" It took a couple of seconds of wondering when raptors learned to talk before she realised that it was actually Dylan standing in the doorway, and she was aiming the Glock right at his heart. She didn't bother feeling embarrassed or apologising – it took up too much energy; she just lifted the barrel so it aimed over his head and looked down again. Even keeping her head up and her eyes focussing seemed like too much effort.

Dylan muttered something – it might have been something like 'giving me a fucking heart attack' but she didn't catch it – and marched over to her. She didn't know what she was expecting, but she hadn't been anticipating him kneeling beside her and holding his hand out. Hell, he looked like he was trying to befriend a stray dog.

"Give me the gun, Regina. You don't need it."

She didn't like the tone of his voice, no, she didn't. It seemed to her condescending, pitying, quiet in a way that made her feel like she was on her death bed – if there was any kindness to it, she completely missed it – and that embarrassed her many times more than the fact that she was sitting there in nothing but her underwear. Actually, she may as well have been wearing her armour again, for all she was paying attention.

After a few seconds, she wordlessly (she didn't think she could trust her voice right now) twisted the gun around in her hand and offered it to him butt first. She wouldn't ever say it loud, but she was more likely to shoot herself with it than anything else, and that wouldn't do anybody any good. _And now I can't even do my job properly. Useless._

"Thanks." He put the gun on the ground and pushed it toward the main console. "I've got a couple of med-kits here, I'm gonna see what I can do with your leg, is that okay?"

Again with the damned death-bed voice. She wasn't going to croak it in the next ten minutes, why talk to her like she was? Suddenly determined not to give him any reason to be any more annoying, she lifted her head up quickly (sparks seem to explode everywhere, like someone doing welding right behind her eyes) and gazed at him steadily.

"Fine, go ahead," she said, possibly a little too loudly. Dylan glanced at her quickly before grabbing something out of the med-kit and messing about with it. Regina watched disinterestedly. Finally, he knelt beside her and held out a syringe and glass bottle full of colourless liquid.

"I'm gonna need to inject you with this, Regina, okay?"

_Stop asking me if everything's okay, _she groused, and stared at the substance suspiciously. She didn't like needles for one thing, and for another, who knew how old that stuff was? Files she'd been reading from the area suggested that the community had been in the time frame for over ten years. Did drugs go off?

"What is it?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask. Dylan turned the little bottle over, squinted at the writing on it before evidently deciding that he had no idea.

"Antibiotics. For the infection." No matter how lousy she was feeling, she had to grin at the way he hid the label shiftily. "It won't cure it straight away, but it'll help. "'Course, if you've got tetanus, you're screwed anyway, but…"

Forgetting the fact that she'd been immunised and that wasn't an issue:

"Thanks. Just what I need to hear," she said, pulling herself into a sitting position. Something dribbled down her leg as she did so – looking at it bemusedly, her mouth twisted into a grimace as she saw the pinkish-white substance staining her skin.

Dylan shrugged.

"Just sayin'."

"Well, just **don't**. Go on, do it. Where?"

"Your arm 'll do."

Regina lifted the arm closest to Dylan, the left one, and looked away as he started to do something with the bottle and syringe. After a few moments, something metallic and sharp pressed against the inside of her arm – before twitching and scratching the skin instead of… Ugh, she didn't want to think about it… instead of doing _whatever_, followed by Dylan muttering 'Aw, Jeez'. Was he _shivering_?

"What's wrong?" she asked, looking back over toward him.

"Huh? Nothing."

"You nearly cut my arm open with your shaking; there's something wrong."

"I did not."

"Don't change the subject." Suddenly feeling cold again, Regina pulled the blanket around her and was amused as Dylan visibly relaxed.

"Fine." He sighed. "Just… it's Edward City. We could've saved them – those people. But we didn't get there in time and now a thousand people are dead. I hate that feeling. It's like I—"

"Don't even finish that. It's not your fault, it's not mine and it's not anyone else's." She gasped slightly as the needle pushed into her skin, and then kept going; if anything, talking would distract her. "They were here for… what, ten years? Fifteen? We couldn't have helped them, it was too long, and all we can do now is try and save our own asses."

"I know. There, done. It's just…" He floundered for words for a few seconds; Regina absently rubbed at the growing spot of blood on her arm and stared at one of the bolts in the ceiling.

"You know, I don't think it's ever going to stop hurting."

Regina grinned suddenly and nearly laughed.

"Wait a year. You'll barely remember you said that," she said after forcing the smile off her face.

"Oh, **thanks**."

She wondered: was he being sarcastic because he thought she was insulting him, or because he thought she was trivialising things?

"No, I mean it." She didn't want him to think either – she _understood_… really. "Last year – on Ibis Island, they told you about that, right?" She'd have been surprised if they hadn't.

"Yeah…"

"I found a woman in one of the labs. She was unconscious, dying maybe, I don't know. When I was in the room with her, I saw Kirk and took off after him. I forgot the woman. By the time I got back, Kirk had killed her. Shot her, blood everywhere. I felt guilty as hell; thought I should've done something for her - and didn't think I ever wouldn't. Now… I can't even remember what she looked like."

"One woman," Dylan pointed out.

"Don't think it doesn't apply. Death is death is death, see?"

"Yeah, okay. I'll take your word for it." Dylan got up, shaking his head. He looked vaguely ill and Regina felt a pang of sympathy for him. She'd numbed herself to it – seen too many dead people to even bother mourning them anymore – but he obviously hadn't. She felt tempted to tell him, _don't be such a Boy Scout – you can never help them all_, but that, she figured, was something he needed to tell himself.

"You do that," she said, instead. Dylan nodded once and made for the door to outside – just as he got to the door, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder at her.

"… Regina? Thanks."

The door slammed shut; he was gone. Regina leaned back, still rubbing her arm, smiling but not really sure why.

"You're welcome."


	4. Briefing and Ordinary World

**Dislaimer**: Dino Crisis is the property of Capcom. They own all rights to the characters, situations and etcetera therein, I'm just borrowing them for a bit for a bit of no-profit fun.

* * *

**Title** Briefing**  
Rating** PG-13**  
**

This was going to be something David would regret later, he knew it. He _did_ usually feel pretty nervous during briefings (they tended to tell you all the shit that could go wrong all before telling you anything else), but this was… something else. _Dinosaurs_, man. Guys with guns? Yes. Bombs? Fine. _Normal_ wild animals? Sure, bring 'em on.

Most of the cast of Jurassic Park? No, no thanks. He didn't like the idea of being stepped on, ripped apart and eaten by just the one animal in one sitting - one that, apparently, not even a good grenade in the face could kill. In David's head, guns could solve pretty much all situations – with that in mind, T-Rexes officially freaked him out.

So far, the briefing had included 'how not to get caught by raptors', 'what to do if you ignore the previous advice', 'what will happen to you if you don't follow _that_ advice' and then 'how to fill out your life insurance forms'. OK, so not the last one, but it may as well have been there.

And of course the survivors from the last accident were walking freaks of nature. Or they had seemed like it. They'd already told horror stories about two of the agents needing masses of reconstructive surgery – and Regina, the (hotter than Hell) woman had already been made to show off her left arm, which seemed to be just a mass of white-pink scar tissue. OK, he was going to rephrase that – Regina was hotter than Hell, but not when her left arm was on show. (And when she wasn't running her mouth, but that was another story)

Then there were the CCTV tapes. There'd only been one given out to the press, a doctored couple-of-minutes tape showing nothing but Regina and another guy, the medic-hacker, in one of the first floor control rooms. He'd seen both versions and they were just as boring as each other.

Blah blah, banter, blah blah, fast forwarding, blah blah—tape running.

_At this point, Regina turned so that her left side was facing the camera_, and whoever was holding the remote paused the tape so they could see exactly what was wrong.

_Her arm was dark red with blood, the material of the sleeve-thing _(fucking weird looking uniforms) _ripped along the edges of a series of wide tooth-marks puncturing the flesh._

The tape started again, _and Rick winced._

"_Ouch."_

This time, the tape fuzzed over and they couldn't be seen or understood. David twiddled his thumbs as they fast-forwarded, and when it did focus again, the two were still there. Brilliant. A government patsy gets more money for standing doing sweet fuck all than he, David, someone who actually went out and risked death for a living, got for actually, well, risking death.

"…_. Screen's fuzzy," Regina, now sporting a bandage on her left arm, was saying. The screen in question didn't have anything on it asides from what looked like a corpse crawling with maggots or something. _

"_Good. Let it stay that way," Rick barely looked up to say, _and David privately agreed.

_Regina gave him an irritated glance and went back to looking at the screens, before evidently seeing something that the CCTV couldn't and jabbing at the thing with her finger._

"_Hey, look—"_

_The screen gave out completely. Regina cursed – _and boy, could she swear; he was almost jealous – _and slammed at it with her fist; it bounced back with a dull clang._

"_Get it back up!"_

"… _But I hate bugs," Rick muttered._

"_Self-hatred is very unhealthy."_ (David sniggered.)

"_Feeling better, I guess?"_

And the tape had, at that point, completely cut out. Most of the other tapes were pretty boring, but one that really stuck out was footage of the inside of an elevator as it traversed four floors – 1 to B3 – with a Tyrannosaur and three guys on it (one TRAT soldier had had to leave the room before the elevator hit B2). By the time it hit B4, the lens was covered in a haze of red.

And guns can't kill that thing? David wasn't going to have a good time of this at all. He clasped his hands together; no, they weren't shaking, he was just fidgeting. Really.

And thank God he wasn't the only one; most of the TRAT guys were pale, one or two had gone green. Dylan Morton – who was sitting next to him – didn't seem too bothered, but David didn't expect _him_ to be. According to Reston over at Records, Morton was a hard case; something about gang wars. Nice enough guy for a thug, but whatever.

And Regina? Completely expressionless. Like a robot or something, it made him uneasy. Maybe you could only take so much of this shit before something just shuts down? He'd have to ask her sometime – if they lived.

* * *

**Title** Ordinary World**  
Rating** Somewhere between PG-13 and PG-16**  
**

Over the past three weeks or so, since returning from Edward City and realising that in just three days, he'd almost forgotten what the real world was like, Dylan had been spending a lot of time with Regina – usually at her place. If anyone asked, she had a PlayStation2 and that made her place much better than his, but really… Well, he was getting used to her being around.

Something, he didn't know what, had _changed_ after May 10th, and somehow Regina was the only familiar thing he had. Something irrational within wanted to hold onto her forever just for that.

"When are you back on duty?"

"You mean how much longer until certain people decide that I've _'recovered sufficiently from my traumatic experiences'_ – shooting lizards and disarming nukes?" Regina's voice was dry, and she didn't stop typing on her laptop (now that he was getting to know her outside of Edward City, he was starting to realise that she spent more time in the virtual world than the real one) to say it, "Two more weeks. I'm more _delicate_ than you, so I get more time off."

"I wish I was delicate," he grumbled, mashing on the PS2 pad a little harder than necessary and cursing his lousy ten-day 'holiday'.

The screen blacked out to go onto a cut scene and he dropped the controller onto his leg before leaning back and stretching; the two were sitting on Regina's very uncomfortable sofa, him like a normal person, her draped over it – and him – like she was some kinda throw rug. Not that he was complaining.

"Well, unless you develop an extra X chromosome, tough shit…" Regina trailed off, the laptop noises stopping as she squinted at the developing scene on her TV.

"Is that guy humping the sword?"

Pause.

"I hate you. I really hate you." Dylan said at length, trying to sound serious but completely unable to stop sniggering. In the end, he just gave in. One good thing about being around Regina (apart from her being easy on the eyes and all): she was… _weirder_, for lack of a better word, than most people he knew. It was cool.

"Why, thank you. You're dying, by the way."

"Shit." He grabbed the controller again, pushed some buttons (hey, he'd never claimed to be a _good_ gamer), and Dante performed some kind of trick combo that blew away everything on screen pretty damned quickly.

"That was lucky," Regina said; the typing and clicking had resumed.

"Luck is really a matter of practice…"

She snorted. "Is that you admitting you spend far too much time with that thing?"

"Could be."

_Better being addicted to Devil May Cry than Regina, huh?_

First sign of being insane. Talking to yourself. This wasn't good.


End file.
